Carved-Ivory Toilet Box (third century A.D.). The wall is carved with Dionysiac reliefs: a reclining maenad (one of Dionysus' female followers) and
two running Cupids, one of whom (here) carries a purse The knob on the lid is in the form of a pine-cone.
This last comment, applicable also to other personal ornaments and effects, from combs and hairpins to toilet-boxes and mirrors, sums up what is a
general characteristic of many of the arts of living discussed above. There is in them a certain lack of restraint, even a certain vulgarity-a love of
immediate and over-elaborate effects which places imperial taste in the same bracket as that of the Victorian period. Like Victorian taste, it was the
product of the fruits of world empire, for example of the free availability of exotic materials and commodities, from precious stones and metals to
coloured marbles, tropical beasts, and (in the case of nineteenth-century England) American and oriental timbers. And, like Victorian taste, it was the
prelude to an age of chaos and uncertainty, an age in which life and art suffered an almost total divorce.
TOC